Shall I lie and say that I am all agog to find out if they succeed in getting me censored? To be honest, it seems very unlikely. There are so many BDSM blogs on WordPress.com, and I reported my own blog as mature content on the second day of its existence.
Here is my response to the complaint:
I’m not a him, I’m a her.
I’ve removed two likes and two links. They were short-lived and I don’t think there aren’t any more, but let me know if you find any.
And there has clearly been some misunderstanding, because my blog has never been removed, so you have never told me how to reinstate it. You did tell me how to report my own blog as mature content. That was the very first question I asked in this forum before I had been on WordPress for a week.
As such, I am very sorry to have upset you, but I think it is clear why I thought you knew. My tagline has always included the word BDSM. There are a lot of us on WordPress.com.
I have been adding a warning to my Blogging 201 posts, and in future I will add it to support requests too. I hope WordPress will make it possible for me to flag my icon or something so that future misunderstandings like this will not occur.
Although that is much less urgent than creating an Enter/Exit screen before entering the blog itself, which Blogger and LiveJournal already have.
I told them about the removal request, and aimingtobegreen said, “I think as long as you warn people clearly there will be adult content then there shouldn’t be a problem.” Sigh. I wish that were true, but the complainer knew that part from Day One. I guess I need to say it’s BDSM and hope that the tiny vanilla kids who might be freaked out won’t be curious enough to Google it.
Somehow that doesn’t sound like the ideal solution, does it.
Anyone else have stories of censorship or welcome to share?
And those are all good books, but I couldn’t even rank them in order of preference, because my kink gagged on all of them equally. (Sorry, authors! Your kink is not my kink but your kink is okay!)
‘Imagine, Lilith. Imagine what it’s like to live out any fantasy you’ve ever had without fear of censure or discovery. He can be whoever you want him to be, and you can do whatever you like to him.’
I could say nothing at all, and Blaine took this as permission to continue. ‘Try it.’ She pressed the crop into my hand. ‘You’ve been a very bad boy, haven’t you, Finn? I’m sure Lilith is capable of teaching you an important lesson.’
He slowly turned to face me so his head was forced to one side against the smooth wood. The huge eyes that had sparked with a life beyond this place were dull and dilated.
Gag. And yet that excerpt is awfully similar to the following scene in Anchored, which was part of my biggest category of favourites, Abuse → Rescue → Happy ending.
Mr. Foster slapped him hard across the ass, more heat than pain compared to all he’d endured already; he barely flinched. When a hand settled on each cheek and spread him wide, his fingers curled numb around the table and he whimpered once, soft and sharp, before he could stop himself, remind himself that he was supposed to be pretending to like this.
“Say it again,” Mr. Foster said, the blunt tip of his cock nudging at Daniel’s hole.
“All this trembling makes me not believe how much you want me.”
“I want you,” Daniel said, but he could not strip the frightened child tone from his words.
And I’m afraid that works for me. So what is the difference?
If the victim is hating it, my good time is uninterrupted as long as (a) they are experiencing sexual pleasure, however nonconsensually, or (b) they are only saying or doing the things I would if I were enjoying it.
So – whimpering, trembling and a frightened child tone, yes. Dull eyes, no – screeching brakes.
I am not proud of this mind-blindness. But there it is.
But why on earth am I the odd one out? There are hordes of submissive women out there reading dark erotica, and most of them don’t seem to have struggled with an addiction to Abuse → No Rescue → Bad Ending.
To obscure matters further, I think factors 1 to 3 also apply to those other readers.
It’s a BDSM truism that the sub needs the dom to enjoy it.
I think the difference must be the abject submission. I really don’t do screaming in ecstasy or “Yes, yes, yes!” With me it’s trembling and terror and tears. Mr. Foster would be utterly disgusted.
The times when I really want it are probably the times a bystander would find hardest to watch. Well, at least until they listened hard enough to make out the sobbed litany of “Please, please, please” and “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
I probably ought to go to bed feeling bad about the mind-blindness. But to be honest, it’s just such a relief that so much of my apparent callousness goes back to the abject submission.
Thanks to Cecilia Tan, Laura Antoniou and C for encouraging me to republish their text. I have added my favourite book covers. Winners are indicated with the 🏆 emoji. Check out the 2012 finalists too.
(Columbus, OH) — National Leather Association: International (NLA-I), a leading organization for activists in the pansexual SM/leather/fetish community, announced today the finalists for its annual writing awards. Named after activists and writers Geoff Mains, John Preston, Pauline Réage, Cynthia Slater, and the groundbreaking organization Samois, they are awarded annually to recognize excellence in writing and publishing about Leather, SM, bondage and fetishes.
The finalists for the Cynthia Slater Non-Fiction Article Award are:
As the host apparently said, this is one act where you hope they’ll make a mistake!
It seems these two adorable lads are French-Canadian acrobatic clowns who call themselves Les Beaux Frères, a pun on “handsome brothers” and “brothers-in-law”.
I don’t know how long this video will stay on the Internet, so do share it while you can. And don’t forget to include your mother.
Please feel free to skip to the results of this survey. They were mixed, but surprisingly encouraging.
1. Dying of desire → Requited → Happy ending
Here is a sub reeling from the realisation that she has no idea when she will get to come, ever.
He had me. My god, he really had me.
You would think that it would be orgasms, that summit of purest pleasure, that would tie me to him. A conditioned response bringing me always back for more.
But after fulfilment one can move on. Make weekend plans. Read the paper. Go out for sushi. Or at least get on with one’s slavegirl day. Not me. I stood, trapped at that barred threshold, unable to see any other path, much less take it. In the absolute grip of the gatekeeper.
This author has a chastity kink, but most dying-of-desire stories produce the torture via unrequited love or sensory overload. And it really takes talent to convey so much want that an extreme power dynamic emerges from that alone. I’m hoping that’s why I don’t have that many favourites in this category:
This excerpt really counts as dying-of-desire as well as rescue. Dean has just rescued Sam (this is Supernaturalslash, but in this story they are not brothers).
Dean seemed pleased with it, turning the volume up a notch. Then he reached back along the back of the seat, settling his hand on the back of Sam’s neck, thumb and two fingers brushing bare skin.
Sam forgot how to breathe. He’d had this reaction before, whenever Dean touched his hand or arm or face, but never at this level. His vision didn’t go dark, but he couldn’t see at all, couldn’t take anything in—lights were exploding behind his eyes. Unconsciously, he dropped his head forward, breathing carefully through his mouth. This couldn’t last, it wouldn’t—even outside of Freak Camp, a monster’s life could, would, always get worse, he knew that—and he had to savor every second.
Distantly, he was aware of Dean looking at him. Dean’s thumb and forefinger began to press gentle circles, moving in counter directions. A strange noise rose in Sam’s throat, unbidden and unfamiliar—almost like some of the sounds he couldn’t help making in interrogations, but entirely different, too. Startled, he choked it off, clenching his hands around the sides of his jeans. He never made noises unless he absolutely couldn’t help it.
You can’t get much more abject than the fear and awe and gratitude from not expecting anything except more abuse. The majority of my favourite stories fall into this category.
Is it the abuse or the rescue that I enjoy? That was a scary question, because I know I often don’t enjoy the post-rescue [cough] relationship.
But I confronted my list of ebooks. And it became blindingly clear that all I need is an extreme power asymmetry after the rescue. Sometimes it’s even better than the abuse. The truth has set me free!
When I found out about BDSM in the 90s, there was still a huge male market for pornographic novels with no aspirations to ethics. This is one of the happier endings, and I think it’s no coincidence that it’s by a submissive female author.
Toy falls to her knees as the pain hits her once more. On all fours, through eyes blurry with tears she looks up at the smiling man and understands at last. This is her owner. All the events of the past months, the operations, the inspections…… all fall into place, suddenly intelligible. She is no longer a free woman, she is no longer a woman voluntarily submitting to a life of servitude in praise of the greater sex, she is now only what her name says, a toy, that can be operated in the same manner as any other toy of sophistication by a simple, hand-held device.
Her eyes meet those of the man who controls her and she screams, in pleasure this time, as the orgasm buffets her.
Yes. In the no-rescue genre, this actually counts as a happy ending. You can see the opposite in this graphic novel scene. I suppose they’re all happy endings for the abusers.
I used to feel sick and swear off every time I read these. But back then there was nothing else. And I missed them when the supply failed. Slash was initially a slightly frustrating substitute because I was used to more, er, interaction per page, higher horsepower, and consistently extreme power dynamics.
But I’ve drifted away from this genre since then. And I didn’t even realise till I wrote this post.
This list is a little shorter because most works of this kind don’t hit my emotional masochism kink. Please also be very, very warned that (a) most of the following works hit my squicks for physical damage, and (b) I now consider these stories junk food that can poison your kink (see Abject Submission 3: Only the Gift).
Visual porn:Anything by Erenisch. I’m so damn relieved to have discovered her. Just Google BDSM comics. Fernando’s graphic novels are frighteningly effective for me, as are Horikawa Gorou’s manga. Not sure if this Femdom Humour gallery counts. (I ran into all these while searching for BDSM humour, triggering a brief horrified replay of my Alebeard experience.)
Results: Good, Bad and Interesting
At first I could only see the bad news, but there was actually good news in every category. Plus a surprise at the end!
Dying-of-desire stories: It takes a lot of desire for me to experience a scene as abject submission. But it can be done.
Rescue stories: I often don’t enjoy the happy endings. But enough D/s can make the rescue even better than the abuse.
No-rescue stories: They can make me feel very sick indeed. But on average, they also make me react harder than anything else. And yet I seem to have drifted away from them.
Surprise: A few of my favourites eluded classification:
While these stories did include abuse or hangups or unrequited wants, the abject submission was coming from somewhere else. It was as if those subs and doms couldn’t be any other way. It was natural for them.
Maybe I’m one of them? These exceptions are some of my most treasured stories. Suffering does make the submission sharper – but it seems I can manage very happily without.
I am jumping up and down for joy. I just lost all the weight I gained from depression last year!
It was more than ten percent of my body weight, and I gained it in one year flat. The doctor was really worried because my family develops diabetes when we’re overweight.
So I tried to diet for the first time in my life. And I got so discouraged that I had stopped looking at the scale. And now this wonderful surprise!
Admittedly, I still have 1kg (a couple of pounds) to go. Wish me luck!
Welcome to Elust #57– The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #58? Start with the rules, come back May 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
*You really should consider adding your popular posts here too* Close Enough
All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!
So far, all the the shame and guilt you’ve seen in this blog should really have been in the past tense. I knew people needed to hear my stories, so I told them, but after sixteen years you do get used to your kink.
Or, well, that’s what I thought. Then last week I read “This One’s for the Invisible Girl”. And suddenly I’m not sure if I do know my kink – or myself.
Let me tell you a story: I’ve been masturbating since before I can remember. This is pretty normal. I’ve almost never had an orgasm that wasn’t caused by masturbation. (I’ve had one.) This, sadly, is also pretty normal.
I can’t remember the first time I had an orgasm. I also can’t remember a time when having orgasms, for me, wasn’t tied to a process of self-destructive psychological abuse in which I would hypnotically force myself to re-imagine and re-live variations on violent, traumatizing feelings from my childhood until I came — and then lie in bed afterwards feeling blurry, dissociated, scared, unable to focus, intellectually muted and emotionally numbed. I’ve hated coming for most of my life. And I still forced myself to do it compulsively, similar to the way I used to cut myself compulsively, knowing that I was going to regret it for the rest of the day.
And, because our culture universally frames orgasms as the epitome of sexual pleasure, I told myself that it was no big deal and that this must just be what “good” feels like. And, when I could bring myself to talk about it at all, I told my partners that, too.
She hated coming. She’d feel horrible for the rest of the day. Yet she couldn’t stop doing it, just like she couldn’t stop cutting herself. There’s a word for that kind of thing. It’s self-injury.
And she’s not the only one. I was horrified to learn from her link that many abuse survivors struggle like this.
The women I have spoken with who struggle with using masturbation as a form of self-injury feel deep shame about what they are doing, and each one fears that she is the only person on the planet who does such a thing. They also tell me that masturbating as self-injury is a compulsion: They want to stop, but they feel powerless to do so. This is true of all forms of self-injury, which is why self-injury is a compulsion, not a recreational hobby.
And you know the scary thing? It made so much sense.
At first I only connected it to a friend who has tried to explain this to me repeatedly. I didn’t understand. Until that post, my friend had literally never encountered a single person who understood. (I am so sorry. Thank you for bearing with me.)
But then I started to wonder … is it me too?
You have every right to scoff and say that I’d know if I had it this bad. And it wasn’t this bad. But as I’ve told you, last year I faced personal and professional failure. It was pretty bad.
I could tell you about the recurring fantasies. I could tell you about bursting into tears when I realised exactly what experiences I was compulsively reliving through them – not abuse, but hellish in their own way.
But others have said it better. Here are two stories that I discovered when things were worst, and loved to pieces. I’ll show you the moments that spoke to my kink like a bell.
This one has a courtesan slave on punishment duty:
The butcher dragged him stumbling down the hallway, shadows swallowing the edges of guttering candlelight, shoved aside a gaudy curtain across one of the narrow antechambers not already occupied by a grunting patron and softly gasping whore. He shoved Luca inside with as little care as he’d given the curtains. A courtesy, this; he could have fucked Luca in the public room, a hundred leering gazes passing through him. Luca reminded himself to be grateful.
And here is the tail end of some extreme old-school hazing:
Then it was over. Meredith, sobbing uncontrollably into his arms, barely reacted as Rudd slapped his bottom and said cheerfully, “Sweet blood, what a fucking mess you are. I don’t know why I bother with you. Go get yourself cleaned up. No tea or supper for you today; I want you cleaning my bedroom till you can lick the floor with your tongue. Oh, and tell Davenham I’ll want your services overnight; he can lock up the third-rankers’ dormitory without you.”
Yes, those were the parts that really did it for me. Are you surprised? There is a reason why I named this blog The University of Abject Submission.
But that was last year. I picked up those stories again last month and was shocked by the disconnect. For the very first time, reading about that state of mind felt like I was on the outside looking in. And I could tell that inside wasn’t a place I wanted to stay for too long – however much it spoke to my kink.
I still respond to stories that nail that feeling. This year I discovered Helenish’s Take Clothes Off As Directed and Theft of Assets, Destruction of Property and well, wow. But there is a difference. My strongest reactions aren’t for the happiest moments – but not the worst, either. And I still love Unmarked and The Golden Bird, but now I find myself going straight for their happy endings.
I don’t want to live in those other places any more. I’m so very thankful that my kink has transformed a little – bounced back, I think, though I can’t be sure.
But should I have let my kink dive down that rabbit hole last year?
Will my future self decide that I’m wallowing now, every time I stand at the mirror of my shame and my emotional masochism takes over?
A security bug potentially affecting two-thirds of the Internet has just been reported. This one is serious – it will be headline news tomorrow.
You can find out which websites are vulnerable by entering their addresses at Heartbleed Test.Chrome users can install Chromebleed to be notified immediately when they visit a vulnerable website.
Update 5, Chromebleed review: I’ve stopped believing Chromebleed. It complains (using qualified language) about sites that everyone else says are fine, like Gmail or WordPress.com.
c|net sensibly recommends that you: (1) change your password once a vulnerable website is fixed, (2) do the same for other websites where you use the same password, and (3) keep an eye on your financial statements for the next little while.
Update 1: Chromebleed nearly gave me a heart attack until I realised that the notification appears when you first open a vulnerable website, but doesn’t go away as you switch between tabs. I’m trying to find out if there is a fix. For now, just keep an eye on the lower right-hand corner whenever you click a link.
Update 4: Stay away from FetLife for a few days. According to Chromebleed, they still haven’t fixed the bug as of 9am, April 9. No surprise, but not impressive.
Update 2: Chromebleed now says Gmail is safe. Chromebleed says Gmail is vulnerable. Everyone else says it’s safe, even the Heartbleed Test. I guess I’ll just be cautious and go offline for the night!
It is dangerous to log in at any vulnerable websites. Don’t even do it to change your password. Wait until you get a notification that they are safe. Browsing the Internet is okay, with the caveat that most of us get our web browsers to remember passwords for some websites, and that counts as logging in. I’m basing this on advice from Lifehacker and its sister site Gizmodo.
Update 3: You can refer to this list of early Heartbleed test results for 1000 websites. “No SSL” counts as not vulnerable (because this was a bug in SSL). Many of those websites have now fixed themselves and notified their users. Thank you to a reader for reminding me about this link.
I expect most major websites to be fixed in another 24 hours or so, i.e. by 10-11 April (depending on your time zone).
The Killer Wore Leather, novel by Laura Antoniou
The real origins of Gor! And who dunnit, of course.
I leave you in the good hands of these comedians.
“It’s been so long since I made love I can’t even remember who gets tied up.” – Joan Rivers
“I urge you all today, especially today during these times of chaos and war, to love yourself without reservations and to love each other without restraint. Unless you’re into leather.” – Margaret Cho
Musical interlude with Harvard mathematician Tom Lehrer:
And that’s it from me. I swear I have never had so much fun researching a post. Can you suggest anything else?
Announcement: This blog now updates every Saturday first thing in the morning, with occasional weekday posts.
![e[lust] #57 – Outed, Bruised, Queer](https://abjectsub.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/candles-180-square1.jpg)
